Monthly Archives: February 2016

Dojo.js and YUI

Today there are several high-quality Javascript toolkits available and several hundred other toolkits of varying quality and completeness. Why out of a sea of many possible options, should you chose Dojo.js and YUI? Let’s explore this topic deep in and know what these tool-kits are about.

Dojo.js

Dojo toolkit is undoubtedly the most powerful JavaScript utility available today and Dojo promises to do everything we need. Its code continues to be a shining instance of modularity and there is a cross domain option in Dojo.js. Dojo has moved into an asynchronous loader that skilfully loads all resources asynchronously. Dojo’s feature rich loader also provides plug-ins for listening to DOM readiness and it is capable of continually loading modules based on environment or configuration. Dojo toolkit offers a class like inheritance pattern using dojo/declares. As declare is used throughout the framework, web developers can cut down eliminated code, easily extend existing classes for increased customization and share modules of code between different projects.

The class system of Dojo uses prototype inheritance and its child classes will be powerful just like parent classes. Another prominent advantage of using Dojo toolkit is that all properties and methods are customizable. Dojo features deferred for several years and they are used for simple and advanced AJAX operations. Dojo toolkit has pioneered several I/O handling methods outside of standard XML, HTTP Request.

Dojo toolkit was designed to ease the rapid development of cross-platform, JavaScript-based applications and websites. Dojo toolkit is known for establishing a framework for defining modules of code and managing their interdependencies. Dojo provides a rich collection of commonly used utility classes and user interface widgets. Web developers all over the world are extremely passionate about Dojo mainly because of the fact that it is completely open source and entire toolkit can be downloaded as a ZIP.

Dojo consists of the core and non-visual modules and Dojo util includes build tools such as optimization, documentation, style checking as well as testing. A typical Dojo widget comprises of JavaScript code, HTML markup as well as CSS style declarations. It is also possible to initialize additional namespaces within ‘dojo’ namespaces which allow extensions of Dojo.js.

Apart from all these above-mentioned traits, Dojo provides a mechanism for building profiles in which the building system is taken as an input. Dojo toolkit provides a local, client-side storage abstraction named Dojo storage and it allows web applications to store data on the client side. Dojo storage facility establishes the best method for persistently storing information when included in a web page.

YUI

User Interface Library (YUI) is an open source JavaScript library for building interactive web applications. Lightweight and modular architecture of YUI makes it scalable, fast, as well as robust. Being a creative brainchild of gifted engineers at Yahoo, YUI fuels most popular websites in the world. Intuitive and well documented Application Programming Interface is considered as the major feature of User Interface Library. Basic DOM handling and building maintainable applications on desktop browsers have become pretty easy with the help of YUI.

Web developers find YUI extremely useful for building simple web pages to complex web applications. Most talked about feature of YUI is that it is free for all users and it is developed in the open on GitHub. Photo browser and basic sliders are few basic examples of User Interface Library. YUI has been in use since 2005 and it has evolved tremendously over the time, thanks to the far-sightedness of Yahoo engineers. The objective of YUI developers at Yahoo was to deliver the best next-generation presentation technologies with an initial focus on in-house web developers. It is a well-known fact that User Interface Library includes several core Cascading Style Sheets resources.

In 2009, Yahoo released YUI3, a modern version of rebuilt YUI to modernize the library.

YUI 3 is equipped with advanced functionalities like CSS selector driven engine and small seed file. It was announced in 2014 that active development of YUI by Yahoo would cease citing the proliferation of server-side solutions. YUI has six types of components and they are YUI core, utilities, UI controls, CSS components, and developer tools and build tools. Also, YUI global object contains language utilities, a script loader, and other baseline infrastructure.

DOM collection associated with YUI will be of immense help in DOM scripting tasks including Cascading Style Sheet style management functionality. Event utility feature in YUI helps developers with safe and easy access to browser events. YUI’s Data Source provides a common interface for other components to interact with different types of data. Element utility embedded in YUI provides a wrapper for HTML elements in the DOM and Get Utility supports asynchronous loading of data.

Top 3 Websites and Why?

Now-a-days the internet is home for millions of websites around the world, but some websites are visited most frequently and they become popular websites. In this article, we have scoured the internet and we brought you the top most popular websites around the world. People use websites for improving their knowledge, development, shopping, social media, and entertainment. Major criteria for selecting top three websites include feedback received from millions of internet users, direct measurement of web traffic and scanning of public websites by web crawlers. Yahoo, Amazon, and YouTube are reported to be the top three websites of today. So, explore this topic and know about the most popular websites of today.

Yahoo! is probably one of the best search engine in the contemporary era. What makes Yahoo! extremely popular among internet users is the fact that it is perfectly made for website and search engine optimization. Since, 2013 Yahoo ranks as the most-visited website in the US. According to the new data from analytics firm ComScore, Yahoo! had more than 195 million unique visitors from desktop computers. There are so many factors in the list that made Yahoo! most popular. The web portal provides content including the latest news, current affairs, entertainment, sports, and it also gives users quick services for other Yahoo! services like “Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Groups, and Yahoo! Messanger” etc. Yahoo! also provides services globally in more than 20 languages. It also provides social networking services and user generated content such as, “Yahoo! Personals, Yahoo! Flick, Yahoo! Buzz”. Yahoo! also partnered with hundreds of leading content providers to present media content, news, and information. Other than that Yahoo! Inc also provides services called Yahoo! Answers, where users can ask their questions and also they can express their opinions. And also visitors, can answer others questions. It also allows the visitors to give the ratings for the best answers which automatically comes on the top. Yahoo! Also offers mobile services for emailing, instant messaging, and mobile blogging.

Let’s talk about the second most popular website:

Amazon: Amazon.com is a company that is tied up with the phenomenon called e-commerce. The founder of the company Jeff Bezos broke the rules of the book business by using the internet rather than using conventional news channels. The company has grown from a basic bookseller to a virtual Wallmart of the web selling products, which consists of a varied range of products like music CD’s, office products, toys, games, electronic goods, hardware, software, food, cookware, apparel, health products, and much more. The company has also grown at an enormous rate.

Sources of competitive advantage: Maintaining and elaborating operational efficiencies is the key to a sustainable competitive advantage of Amazon.com. The ability to offer shopping convenience, wide selection, ease of navigation, discounted pricing, and reliability of order fulfillment are all tied up directly to the company’s logistical competencies. Amazon.com also aims to ship 95% of their products on the ordered date.

Amazon.com’s market success totally depends on its ability to maintain and grow it’s customers base by knowing and serving the customers better than its competitors and providing a higher level value added differentiation in customer service. The value added services, delivery of products, quality, and reliability made amazon, the users first choice.

The third most popular website on the internet:

Youtube: The reason for the huge popularity of Youtube is because, a user can learn various things by just watching a simple video. People can choose from an unlimited number of videos available and YouTube allows registered members to post an unlimited number of videos on their website. Registering for a YouTube account is free and it will take only a few minutes. It is relatively easy to upload videos in YouTube and it is one of the major reasons for its popularity. According to a new study by Finland’s Aalto University, music is the most popular YouTube content by several measures.

Lyrics and still videos rank highly in YouTube search results and analysis by Aalto University found three primary music video types including traditional, user appropriated and derivative music videos. Qualitative and quantitative analysis of YouTube content indicates the support they receive from the audience. YouTube users are happy with music with rolling lyrics, cover versions and parodies of authenticated content. YouTube has experienced explosive years of growth and average visit times of YouTube at mobile are at 40 minutes at a session. Changing digital behaviour among youngsters is pointed as the major reason behind the popularity of YouTube.

YouTube also grows into a social network on its own and available statistics indicates that Google-owned YouTube is the second most used app in the USA with over 977 million users. YouTube permits users to make use of WebM, H.264, MPEG-4 AVC, and Adobe Flash Video technology to display a variety of user-generated and corporate video. YouTube has created a new era of history in video hosting service arena and “broadcast you” is relevant and meaningful motto of them. YouTube offers a new world of visual elegance showcased in a colourful palette to their viewers.

Final Thought:

In the ultra-competitive world of Internet, many websites have come and gone over the years. The above listed top three websites in the world have remained virtually unchanged for quite a while now.

WHAT IS AWS cloud services

Managing the unique and innovative changes in both technology and business over the past decade has created an ongoing IT infrastructure challenge for many senior technologies executive. Each progressive step has been built on the previous one while adding new challenges, dimensions, and opportunities for IT departments and their business partners.

In recent past, virtualization has become a widely accepted way to reduce operating costs and increase the authenticity of the enterprise IT. The speed of innovation and unique acceleration in introduction of new products has changed the way the market works. Along with the wide acceptance of software as a service (Saas), these changes have paved the way for the latest IT infrastructure challenge to cloud computing.

What is Cloud Computing?

Cloud computing has become one of the most discussed IT paradigms in the recent past. It builds on many of the advances in IT industry over the past decade and presents significant opportunities for the organization to minimize time to market and trim costs. Using cloud computing, organizations can consume shared computing and storage resources rather than building, operating, and developing infrastructure on their own.

In the simplest terms, cloud computing is the process of storing and accessing the data and programs over the internet instead of using your computer’s hard drive. Cloud computing enables organizations to obtain malleable, secure, and cost-effective IT infrastructure. Cloud computing has now become a highly demanded service due to the advantages of high computing power, lower cost of services, high performance, flexibility, accessibility, as well as availability. In a year, cloud vendors are almost experiencing a growth of 50%. But, due to being in a stage of infancy, it has some pitfalls which have to be given proper attention to make cloud computing services more reliable and user-friendly.

Amazon and Cloud Computing

Amazon had spent over a decade and millions of dollars building and managing the large-scale, safe, and efficient IT infrastructure that powered one of the world’s largest online retail platforms. Amazon has launched Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2006, and today it is serving hundreds of thousands of customers worldwide. Amazon.com is running a global web platform serving millions of customers and managing billions of dollars worth of commerce every year.

The growing AWS collection offers diversified services including:

Cloud drive: This allows users to upload and access music, videos, documents, and pictures from web-connected devices. The service also enables users to stream music in their devices.

Scalable and Elastic: Organizations can quickly add and subtract AWS resources to their applications in order to meet customers requirements and manage cost.

Cost-effective: With AWS, companies only pay for what they use, without any upfront or long-term commitments.

Secure: In order to provide end-to-end security and privacy, AWS builds services in accordance with best security practices, provides the appropriate security features in those services and documents.

Flexible

The major key difference between AWS and IT models is flexibility. The flexibility of the AWS allows you to keep the programming models, languages, and operating systems that are better suited for your projects. In other words, Flexibility means, migrating legacy applications to the cloud is easy and cost effective. Instead of re-writing applications, you can move them to AWS cloud and tap into advanced computing capabilities.

Cost-effective

Cost effective is one of the complicated elements in delivering contemporary IT solutions. Let’s take an example, developing and deploying an application for an e-commerce site can be a low-cost effort, but a successful deployment can increase the need for hardware and bandwidth.

In the same way, the cloud provides an on-demand IT infrastructure which makes you consume only the amount of resources you actually need. One is not bounded to set amount of storage, bandwidth, or computing resources.

Scalable and Elastic

In the conventional IT organization, scalability and elasticity are often equated with investment and infrastructure. In the cloud, scalability and elasticity provide opportunity for savings and improved ROI. AWS uses the word elastic to describe the ability to scale computing resources easily, with minimum friction.

Secure

AWS provides scalable cloud computing platform for the users with end-to-end security and end-to-end privacy. AWS builds security into services in accordance with security best practices.

Final Verdict:

Today, Amazon web Services provides highly conscientious, scalable, and low-cost infrastructure platform in the cloud that powers hundreds of thousands of businesses all over the world. Customers across all industries are taking advantages of all the benefits.

MOTION ANIMATION IN UI

Motion animation in UI has become an extremely important part of the UI design experience across different applications. Web designer maestros with a bunch of creativity in their arsenal predict an animated future for user interface design. We all are aware of the fact that animation is a key component of mobile, web or software applications of today. One of the majestic contributions of animation in upcoming days will be the availability of tools that improve UI production workflow. Although animation in interaction design is not new, it has a supreme role in communicating UI behavior. Animation offers the colorful opportunity to make applications more enjoyable, interactive and pleasing to the eye.

Web designers should be equipped with the ability to illustrate stories with motion-based animation. According to Google’s material design guideline, “perceiving an object’s tangible form helps us

understand how to manipulate it. Observing an object’s motion tells us whether it is light or heavy, flexible or rigid, small or large”. Motion animation in UI deserves special importance while designing menu systems or on-screen visual components.

Will animation be the big UI trend in this year? The answer to this question will be a big, resounding “Yes” as Slavery Footprint, Apple’s Mac-Pro and Oakley’s MX Goggles are power packed with motion animation. Animated concepts are unquestionably one of the most useful tools during the design process which will help to communicate motion and interaction. As animation came to the forefront, web designers will have to substitute their static showcases with animated GIFs. The future is bright for web developers who can design and guide people with motion animation.

Today’s web designers are engaged in the execution of sophisticated UI animation techniques. Advancements in UI animation indicate that it will become future of the web and product design interactions. Although CSS animation rocketed into fame in 2009, it was not heavily dependent on UI design until 2014. Increased browser functionalities, as well as device performance, contributed immensely to the much-publicized emergence of motion animation in UI.

The introduction of motion into UI sets the stage ready for innovative experiments in design solutions. People using websites and apps are drawn to movement fuelled by motion animation in User Interface. Directional animation movements help the human mind easily to understand the origin of a new object. The purpose of animation should be clearly defined before being added to a product and it should be carefully designed. The basic principle of motion animation in UI is that it should perform in expected ways that makes the viewer to feel more lifelike. Increasing emphasis on motion animation can be attributed to the more paired back design of iOS design. Web designers implement motion animation with same integrity and enthusiasm they showed in implementing other aspects of UI design. Apps should look at going beyond conventional motion solutions that really captivates product users. Motion animation within a mobile app should convey a distinct character keeping clear consistency throughout.

Motion animation in UI will have to establish physical space of the app by the way objects coming on and off the screen. It serves as a valuable guide keeping the user well informed and preventing them from feeling lost. Motion gives new context to the content on screen by detailing the physical state of those assets and environment they reside. Responsive and intuitive motion reacts in a way that reassures the user rather than confuses them. Its reaction to User Interface would be complementary as well as comprehensible. Web design experts point out that motion animation in UI evokes a positive emotional response.

Apps have always been a UI playground for some time and it is always refreshing to see delightful animations in mobile apps. The App Store has tons of Dribble apps and they are absolutely fantastic. Every animation in Dribble Apps fits perfectly with other and it looks exactly like multiple libraries of animations festooned together. Lush, Clima, Storehouse, ReadMe, Unread, and Todo Movies are some of the classic applications that extensively utilize motion animation in UI in the best possible manner.

Animations in material design give users feedback on their actions and provide visual continuity when users interact with an app. Android 5.0 and above lets customization of Touch Feedback, Circular Reveal, Activity Transitions, Curved Motion and New State Changes. The popularity of motion animation in UI testifies the ever increasing importance of aesthetics for web design. Animation on UI can be more or less entertaining especially for users who have previous experience with non-animated user interface. Animation makes the users aware of system triggered changes on the user interface that may otherwise go unnoticed. Thus the greatest best thing about animation is that it can provide a sense of orientation by making screen sequence and hierarchy transparent.

Final Verdict:

The key to create an awesome animation is to convert real world movements into the digital world experience. Hence, animation helps you to create a memorable user interface.

LESS VS SASS

Technology has gained fast pace with new advanced tools and languages enabling developers build rich internet-based applications. Wielding the true power of a CSS preprocessor is an adventure. There are endless languages, syntaxes, and features which are ready to use. Many get confused on which CSS preprocessor language to go with. In this article, we will be covering the various features and benefits of using different preprocessors – Sass and Less.

An Overview of Less

Less is a dynamic style sheet language that can be compiled into cascading style sheets (CSS) and run on the client or server-side. Less extends CSS with dynamic behavior such as variables, mixins, operations, and functions. It can be run on both client and server-side, with Node.js.

In simple terms, Less allows the user to write CSS in a smarter way by combining functions, mixins, operations, and many more. This means, the user can write more terse style information and can reuse things like colors and styles more easily. Less is open source. The first version of Less was written in Ruby; however, in the later version, use of Ruby has been depreciated and replaced by Javascript.

An overview of Sass

SASS is a scripting language that is interpreted into cascading style sheets (CSS). Sass is a pre-processing language and has two syntaxes, one is “indented syntax” and the other one is “SCSS”. The indented syntax uses the syntax similar to Haml. It uses indentation to separate the code blocks and newline characters to separate rules. Whereas, SCSS syntax uses block formatting same as CSS. cloud hosting info . It uses braces to denote code blocks and semicolons to separate rules. Both the syntaxes are traditionally given the extensions .sass and .scss.

Which one is better Sass or Less?Installation Installing Sass: Sass needs ruby installed to work. This comes pre-installed in MAC but, in windows, you need to install before you start playing with Sass.

Installing Less: Less is inbuilt on Javascript. So the installation is as easy as linking Javascript library to your HTML document.

Alternatively, an easy way to install Less on the server is with npm;$ npm install -g lessFeatures:
Here are the main features of Sass and Less.

As we can see from features list above, the difference between Sass and Less is not huge. Both offer a good range of options to help you to write smart and efficient code.

The major differences between Less and Sass are variables, Inheritance, Looping logic, and compass.

Mixins, Inheritance & Extend:

Mixins in Sass and Less are defined bit differently. In Sass, we use @mixin directive whereas in Less we define it as a class selector.

Mixins in Sass and Less are used to include properties from one ruleset to another. In Sass, this method is taken further with selector inheritance. The concept is identical, but instead of copying the whole property, Sass will extend or group selectors that have identical properties and values using the @extend directive.

Compass

Sass: has a compass on its side which contains the plethora of Mixins to write CSS3 syntax in less time. Compass extends way beyond just CSS3 Mixins. It also has added other features like Helpers, Layout, Typography, Reset, and Sprite images.

Less: Less also has several extensions, unlike Compass (which has everything in one place), they are separated. Each and every extension is built by a different group of developers. This will not cause problems for seasoned users, but it could be burdensome for those starting out.

These are the major differences between Sass and Less.

Final Thought:

These two libraries share a lot of basics. Both of tools are fantastic for the designers who code, and they can also help developers efficiently and quickly. Depending on the information and subtlety to your projects, choose the preprocessor that seems to be best for your project.

What is the best way to conditionally apply a class?

The best way is to apply a ternary operator to the view element.
For ex. ng:class=”( = = = ) ? : <else,apply false condition>”.
In the above syntax, we check for the condition if the current value id equal to the required value. If it is true, then the first assigned class is applied. If it is false, then the second assigned class is applied

‘this’ vs $scope in Angular js controllers?

This if used in the controller so corresponds to the controller itself as it tells who actually is calling the function.$scope is the binder which connects the model to the view and controller to have binding.